Explore Your City #2: West Seattle | Alki Beach

Last weekend I explored Pike Place Market in Downtown Seattle and Capitol Hill (you can read my post about it here). This week, I was lucky enough to sail around Lake Washington and ride a water taxi for the first time from Downtown Seattle to West Seattle. As someone who is prone to getting seasick on open water, I’ve always been hesitant to go out on any boat on any sort of body of water – but my phobia has definitely gotten better over the past few years and I don’t get too sick anymore. I’ll leave out the unnecessary details.

This was my first time riding the water taxi and it was quite the experience. After a few hours shopping in downtown, my friends and I made our way from Pioneer Square to Pier 50. For those of you with an active UPASS or Orca card, you can use them to board the taxi! Otherwise you can pay with cash and board for $4. It takes about 15 minutes to get to the West Seattle dock and then you can explore Alki Beach! If you get seasick, you may want to stand outside on the deck rather than sit inside because it’s stuffy.

As soon as the water taxi pulls up to the dock, you can probably spot people fishing and crabbing if the weather is nice. There are many condos overlooking the water and right in front of the boardwalk is a restaurant that started off as a food truck, called Marination Ma Kai. We all decided to stop for a snack and despite the line, we got our food very quickly. The verdict? Everything was delicious, very reasonably priced, and they have a unique menu. Hawaiian-Korean cuisine? Yes please.

Kalbi TacoHawaiian Mac salad (w/ spam)Kimchi Quesadilla

Once we were back in the city, we stayed out to watch the sunset and it was absolutely beautiful. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Now for the fun stuff.. only hours into our adventure did I decide/get permission from my adventure buddies to start vlogging so that’s why this is such a short one. But here’s my first attempt at a vlog! Unlike my last video (you can find it on my channel), the audio should be normal. My iMovie skills are still lacking since I’m teaching myself as I go but I got really fancy this time and added transitions. Please, hold your applause. But do enjoy the sunset. I can’t get over how beautiful it was! Let me know in the comments if you’ve ever tried out Marination Ma Kai or what you think about the vlog! Not going to lie, I was a little self conscious to be vlogging myself so the dual camera feature on my Canon came in handy. I love this camera!! Review soon, I swear.